Label: Io Records
Catalog Number: iod.001 & iod.003
Release Date: March/April 2009
Format: Digital

The Devolution Series’, initially released partially in 2001, is a universe created by Richard J Valeo where machines speak to each other, and we get to listen to them as they think and play. Utilizing only field recordings and non-audio computer files files as audio sources, Valeo explores what sounds the computer itself makes when married to the organic world. With time stretching, convolution and pitching as the main methods of sound processing, he creates a truly ‘digital landscape’, a place that can only exist inside of computers, that is both organic and strangely familiar.

Designed to create an emotive sonic genome through the marrying of the organic and digital sound universes, ‘The Devolution Series’ creates a ‘digital sonic landscape’ that can only exist inside of the computer.  Listening to this sonic universe is much like listening to the sounds of machines becoming sentient, their inner thoughts, and their dialogues with each other.

By labeling the compositions with numbers rather than titles, it disconnects the listener from any frame of reference for the sounds and allows the listener to simply experience the music.

Volume One Available Here on Boomkat.

Label: Io Records
Catalog Number: iod.002
Release Date: March 2009
Format: Digital

Hardware Excursions Volume One:
The Hardware Excursions is a series of compositions composed using only harware. Excursion One and Excursion Two are completely improvised and done with out sequencers and use only an Oberheim OB-1, a Korg Monopoly, a clock modified Ibanez D-1000 digital delay and an Alesis Midiverb as sound sources. The concept behind this performance, we well as all of these ‘Excursions’ is to create a meditative space where the listener can let go of concrete ideas of sound sources and become one with the sounds and get inside their own head.

Available now exclusively at Boomkat

With each release Io Records explores the diverse musical universe of RJ Valeo — both his own compositions and those by fellow musicians he feels fits the distinct vision of Io Records.

With this series of releases, ‘Devolutions’, Valeo creates a universe where machines speak to each other, and we get to listen to them as they think and play. Utilizing only field recordings and non-audio computer files files as audio sources, Valeo explores what sounds the computer itself makes when married to the organic world. With time stretching, convolution and pitching as the main methods of sound creation he creates a truly ‘digital landscape’, a place that can only exist inside of computers, that is both organic and strangely familiar.

Beginning the series with 2 long play releases, followed by an EP, ‘Devolutions’ takes us on a computer aided journey through a contemplative digital landscape that can best be described at intimate and personal. The processes developed during the creation of these initial compositions in 2000 and 2001 form the foundation for his signature sound design style still present in all of his compositions today.

Boomkat review:
“After last week’s Hardware Excursions, RJ Valeo sustains his experimental outlook with this selection of masterfully realized micro-drones. The interchange between extreme high frequencies and deep, steady-handed industrial tones on ‘Construct 05′ immediately brings to mind Richard Chartier’s highly disciplined sound world, but these compositions also move towards more extrovert territory, harbouring shadows of half-melodies and flourishes of fractured circuitry. These more exploratory releases find Valeo in glorious form - let’s hope that he continues to pursue this beatless direction for a good while longer yet…”

The folks over at Boomkat had something nice to say about “Orbits Decaying”. Really, no sideways compliments this time. Here are their exact words…

“New from RJ Valeo’s Isomer Transition project, this EP collects a fresh batch of futuristic minimal techno, all of which is imbued with a far more elaborate production sensibility than is normally permitted by genre conventions. 4/4 as tracks like ‘Searching For Clues’ and ‘Hot Salsa’ may be, there’s no shortage of clever sound designs to revel in via some close headphone listening. Great stuff, suitable fo rhome listening scrutiny and deployment on more forward-thinking dancefloors.”

Following fellow New Yorker Stefny’s release is Isomer Transition who brings us a seething low Hz tinted package called “Orbits Decaying”.

Pieces such as “Give Me Your Hand” and “Landing” are laced with sizzling atom-disintegrating electronics which drive themselves to excite every molecule in their aim and colour them with an unending spectrum of interlacing and extremely quickly vibrating pigments. “Hot Salsa” and “Parametric Pressure” throw down the gauntlet and let the low end out of the cage while quickly chased by a trailing emergent constellation of glittering glassy shards in undulating flight, arching across jagged terrain and leaving a dripping molten trail behind in memory while “Searching for Clues” broils into an acidic crawl down the sides of tilting skyscrapers, dripping off at the optimum angle and leaving resonating tubes of opalescent material reaching to firmly grab the surface below.

Purchase at Beatport Here

I am proud to announce that one of my compositions from the “Days EP” for the Modyfier blog was selected for inclusion in the October edition of the UK’s venerable “The Wire” magazine. It is currently available at Other Music, Kim’s Video, and other places imported music magazines are sold. It is the one with Richie Hawtin on the cover.

Here is the little blurb they posted about me and my track.

07 Richard J Valeo Monday Night
From Days (IO)
Since 2001, Brooklyn’s Richard J Valeo has worked up his rhythmic fragmentary Techno under a variety of aliases including Transelectronic Theory, Isomer Transition and plain old RJ Valeo. Following his recent September album on Type Records, Days appears on his own imprint IO.

With the preceding decade’s technology explosion, particularly in the arena of home computing, it has become easier than ever to compose and record music. Unfortunately, as most of us know, it has as a result also become harder than ever to find really good stuff in the sea of song that is being created. Social networking sites like Myspace alone are a labyrinth of sub-par and half-baked ideas, but that didn’t stop electronic label Moodgadget Records from embarking on the daunting task of weeding through the Myspace dumpster in search of a genuine soundmaker. Luckily for all of us the hunt paid off in the form of a talented Brooklynite composer.

Isomer Transition, whose real name is RJ Valeo, has composed four songs in a blend of techno and house styles for the Moodgadget EP Mission to Mars. Some of the beats crafted - although typically techno in their bass-snare 1-2-1-2 pattern and middling tempos - are the overall primary hot draw here. “Loop Me Through to Control the Mains” and “Deep in Space” each start out simply, with thumping drum programming lathered on thick enough to warm up anybody harboring any frigid suspicions as to whether or not Valeo is of ‘real deal’ caliber. Rest assured, frosties - Isomer Transition is legit.

The beat construction on this painfully short joint is most easily likened to that of Matthew Dear’s Audion: dirty, danceable, and constantly building. With each new set of 8 bars, Isomer Transition throws in subtle new sounds like crisp offbeat hi-hats, further subdivided bass drum rhythms, and all sorts of sonic touches (hand claps, ambient curtains, quickly tapped clicks & clacks). In all four roughly six-minute tracks there are no down (read: shitty) moments and the only disappointments with Mission to Mars is it’s aforementioned brevity. One can only look forward to bigger developments from this artist and more gem-like finds from his determined parent label.

Reviewed by Josh Zanger
Joshua Ian Zanger, a native of rural Chicago, rocks many a world with his writing, style, and generally sweet aroma.

link to review

Isomer Transition: Mission to Mars
Moodgadget

Can machine funk be simultaneously cold and warm? The four minimal techno tracks on the Mission to Mars EP, Isomer Transition’s (RJ Valeo) follow-up to last year’s Future Days release Shadowland, certainly suggest as much: the songs’ shiny surfaces may be as cold as deep space, but their earthy dance quality bespeaks bodily warmth too. The sleek textures and punctuating starburst blasts of “Deep in Space” place it in a dance club at some distant docking station but the irrepressible funk of its skipping stomp and bass rumble reveals an all-too-human physicality at its core. “Space Madness” batters rubbery percolations and snappy beats with meteor showers of warped synth lines, while “The Exploration of Region 13” guides a swinging disco groove and slithering bass line through silken stratospheres. Merge the drum machines and synth acid of Plastikman with the pristine elegance of Kraftwerk and the result might sound something like Isomer Transition.

September 2007

Link to textura.org review.